Message Ahead

Poets Respond to the Poems of Jonas Mekas Message Ahead is a companion to the collection of poetry, Words Apart and Others, featuring twenty-one distinguished poets and critics, friends and admirers, reflecting on Mekas's pioneering contribution to contemporary art and culture, as the "godfather of the American avant-garde." Featuring: John Godfrey, Yoshimasu Gōzō, Barry Schwabsky, Charity Coleman, James Sherry, William Benton, Kimberly Lyons, Krzysztof Czyżewski, Lina Vitkauskas, Brenda Iijima, Yuko Otomo, Basil King, Steve Dalachinsky, Carter Ratcliff, Kristin Prevallet, George Quasha, Bob Holman, Benjamin Sloan, Lee Ann Brown & Louise Landes Levi, Penny Arcade, Sparrow “Jonas Mekas. Saying the name brings home a range of agitating mind sensations, mainly an accumulation of often challenging film experience from the last half-century. Practically a rubric for the whole phenomenon of radically new cinema, it's an experienced name, coming to us with compressed suggestion—that is, a